The Low Light Photography Field Guide

The Technical Edit

In normal bright-light or flash photography, you might go straight to image selection on aesthetic grounds, on the reasonable assumption that the images will be technically competent.

Any serious issues, such as auto-focus incorrectly targeted on the background instead of the subject, would have flagged themselves at the time of shooting. Not so in low light photography, and particularly not so with handheld. As already discussed, the combination of shutter speed, aperture, and ISO setting is, for much of the shoot, likely to put you on the edge of acceptability.

Whichever browser, database or workflow program you use for selecting which images to process, the very first step is to check for sharpness, while also keeping an ...